The Moving Target

11

At the bottom of a black box a futile little man was sitting with his back against something hard. Something equally hard was hitting him in the face. First on one side of the jaw, then on the other. Every time this happened his head bounced once against the hard surface behind him. This distressing sequence – the blow followed by the bounce – continued with montonous regularity for a considerable period of time. Each time the fist approached his jaw the futile man snapped at it futilely with his aching teeth. His arms, however, hung peacefully at his sides. His legs were remarkably inert and distant.

A tall shadow appeared at the mouth of the alley, stood one-legged like a stork for an instant, then limped grotesquely toward us. Puddler was too absorbed in his work to notice. The shadow straightened up behind him and swung one arm high in the air. The arm came down with a dark object swinging at the end of it. It made a cheerful sound, like cracking walnuts, on the back of Puddler’s head. He knelt in front of me. I couldn’t read his soul in his eyes because only the whites were showing. I pushed him over backward.

Alan Taggert put his shoe on and squatted beside me. “We better get out of here. I didn’t hit him very hard.”

“Let me know when you’re going to hit him hard. I want to be present.”

My lips felt puffed. My legs were like remote and rebellious colonies of my body. I established mandates over them and got to my feet. It was just as well I couldn’t stand on one of them. I would have kicked the man on the pavement and regretted it later – several years later.

Taggert took hold of my arm and pulled me toward the mouth of the alley. A taxi with one door open was standing at the curb. Across the street the stucco entrance of the Wild Piano was deserted. He pushed me into the cab and got in after me.

“Where do you want to go?”

My brain was a vacuum for an instant. Then anger surged into the vacuum. “Home to bed, but I’m not going. Swift’s on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“They’re closed,” the driver said.

“My car’s in their parking lot.” And my gun was in the car.

We were halfway there before my brain caught up with my tongue. “Where in hell did you come from?” I said to Taggert.

“Out of the everywhere into the here.”

I snarled at him: “Don’t double-talk. I’m not in the mood.”

“Sorry,” he said seriously. “I was looking for Sampson. There’s a place back there called the Wild Piano. Sampson took me there once, and I thought I’d ask them about him.”

“That’s what I thought I’d do. You saw the answer they gave me.”

“How did you happen to go there?”

I couldn’t be bothered explaining. “I stumbled in. Then I stumbled out.”

“I saw you coming out,” he said.

“Did I walk out?”

“More or less. You had some help. I waited in the taxi to see what gave. When the bruiser took you into the alley I came in after you.”

“I haven’t thanked you,” I said.

“Don’t bother.” He leaned toward me and said in an earnest whisper: “You really think Sampson’s been kidnapped?”

“I’m not thinking so well just now. It’s one idea I had when I was having ideas.”

“Who would have kidnapped him?”

“There’s a woman named Estabrook,” I said, “a man named Troy. Ever meet him?”

“No, but I’ve heard of the Estabrook woman. She was with Sampson in Nevada a couple of months ago.”

“In what capacity?” My bruised face felt like leering. I let it leer.

“I wouldn’t know for sure. She went there by car. The plane was out of commission, and I was in Los Angeles with it. I never got to see her, but Sampson mentioned her to me. As far as I could tell, they sat around in the sun talking about religion. I think she’s a sidekick of this holy man Claude. The one Sampson gave the mountain to.”

“You should have told me before. That was her picture I showed you.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It doesn’t matter now. I spent the evening with her. She was the woman I was with in the Valerio.”

“She was?” He seemed astonished. “Does she know where Sampson is?”

“It’s possible she does, but she wasn’t saying. I’m going to pay her another visit now. And I could use some help. Her household is a rather violent one.”

“Good!” said Taggert.

My reactions were still too slow, and I let him drive. He tended to bank on the turns, but all went well until we got to the Estabrook house. It was dark. The Buick was gone from the driveway, and the garage was empty. I knocked on the front door with the muzzle of my gun. No answer.

“She must have gotten suspicious,” Taggert said.

“We’ll break in.”

But the door was bolted and too strong for our shoulders. We went around to the back. In the yard I stumbled over a smooth, round object that turned out to be a beer bottle.

“Steady there, old man,” Taggert said in a Rover Boy way. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

He flung himself with youthful abandon against the kitchen door. When we pushed together it splintered at the lock and gave. We went through the kitchen into the dark hall.

“You’re not carrying a gun?” I said.

“No.”

“But you know how to use one.”

“Naturally. I prefer a machine gun,” he bragged.

I handed him my automatic. “Make do with this.” I went to the front door, pulled back the bolt, and opened it a crack. “If anybody comes let me know. Don’t show yourself.”

He took up his position with great solemnity, like a new sentry at Buckingham Palace. I went the rounds of the living-room, the dining-room, the kitchen, the bathroom, turning lights on and off. Those rooms were as I had seen them last. The bedroom was slightly different.

The difference was that the second drawer had nothing but stockings in it. And a used envelope, torn and empty, which was crumpled in a corner behind the stockings. The envelope was addressed to Mrs. Estabrook at the address I was visiting. Someone had scrawled some words and figures in pencil on the back:

It looked like a crude prospectus for a remarkably profitable business. One thing I knew for sure: the Wild Piano wasn’t making that kind of money.

I turned the envelope over again. It was dated April 30, a week before, and postmarked Santa Maria. While that was sinking in, I heard a heavy motor growling in the road. I snapped off the light and moved into the hall.

A wave of light washed over the front of the house, poured in at the crack of the door where Taggert was standing. “Archer!” he whispered hoarsely.

Then he did a bold and foolish thing. He stepped out onto the porch, in the full white glare, and fired the gun in his hand.

“Hold it,” I said, too late. The bullet rapped metal and whined away in ricochet. There was no answering shot.

I elbowed past him and plunged down the front steps. A truck with a closed van was backing out of the drive in a hurry. I sprinted across the lawn and caught the truck in the road before it could pick up speed. The window was open on the right side of the cab. I hooked my arm through it and braced one foot on the fender. A thin white cadaver’s face turned toward me over the wheel, its small frightened eyes gleaming. The truck stopped as if it had struck a stone wall. I lost my grip and fell in the road.

The truck backed away, changed gears with a grinding clash, and came toward me while I was still on my knees. The bright lights hypnotized me for a second. The roaring wheels bore down on me. I saw their intention and flung myself sideways, rolled to the curb. The truck passed ponderously over the place in the road where I had been, and went on up the street, the roar of its motor mounting in pitch and volume. Its license plate, if it had one, wasn’t lighted. The back doors were windowless.

When I reached my car Taggert had started the engine. I pushed him out of the driver’s seat and followed the truck. It was out of sight when we reached Sunset. There was no way of knowing whether it had turned toward the mountains or toward the sea.

I turned to Taggert, who was sitting rather forlornly with the gun in his lap. “Hold your fire when I tell you to.”

“It was too late when you told me. I aimed over the driver’s head, anyway, to force him out of the cab.”

“He tried to run me down. He wouldn’t have got away if you could be trusted with firearms.”

“I’m sorry,” he said contritely. “I guess I was trigger happy.” He handed me the gun, butt foremost.

“Forget it.” I turned left toward the city. “Did you get a good look at the truck?”

“I think it was Army surplus, the kind they used for carrying personnel. Painted black, wasn’t it?”

“Blue. What about the driver?”

“I couldn’t make him out very well. He was wearing a peaked cap, that’s all I could see.”

“You didn’t see his front plate?”

“I don’t think there was any.”

“That’s too bad,” I said. “It’s barely possible Sampson was in that truck. Or has been.”

“Really? Do you think we should go to the police?”

“I think we should. But first I’ll have to talk to Mrs. Sampson. Did you phone her?”

“I couldn’t get her. She was out with sleeping pills when I called her back. She can’t sleep without them.”

“I’ll see her in the morning, then.”

“Are you going to fly up with us?”

“I’ll drive up. There’s something I want to do first.”

“What’s that?”

“A little private business,” I said flatly.

He was silent after that. I didn’t want to talk. It was getting on toward dawn. The murky red cloud over the city was turning pale at the edges. The late-night traffic of cabs and private cars had dwindled to almost nothing, and the early-morning trucks were beginning to roll. I watched for a blue Army surplus truck with a closed van and didn’t see one.

I dropped Taggert at the Valerio and went home. A quart of milk was waiting on my doorstep. I took it in for company. The electric clock in the kitchen said twenty after four. I found a box of frozen oysters in the freezing compartment of the refrigerator and made an oyster stew. My wife had never liked oysters. Now I could sit at my kitchen table any hour of the day or night and eat oysters to my heart’s content, building up my virility.

I undressed and got into bed without looking at the empty twin bed on the other side of the room. In a way it was a relief not to have to explain to anyone what I had been doing all day.